free/premium/donation???

Hi Mads

Thanks for posting your concerns.

I totally agree. I also feel tricked into the so-called “Free” membership to then learn there is a compulsory monthly, bi-annual or annual subscription that is called a “Donation”.

This is a “.com” website, but the owners claim that the website is not-for-profit, funded by these so-called donations.

Of course, when I first read about the “Free” membership, I thought “is this too good to be true?” and remembered the sage advice saying “if it looks too good to be true it probably IS too good to be true”.

In summary, we HAVE been tricked into believing that “Free” membership will give us “full access to the GPLDL WordPress Repository” and that compulsory subscriptions are somehow not subscriptions because they are called Donations.

Is the stance that “GPLDL is a not-for-profit website backed by donations” (as per their donations page) just a load of posturing? The jury is still out on this one, but I’m sure feeling skeptical. I’m starting to think this is just a novel marketing approach aimed at profit-making. But I ask the website owners to please forgive me if I’m wrong.

Hi Mads

I just checked the date on your original post … I misread January 2023 to be this year and thought at first glance that your original posting was only weeks old. It’s hard to believe no-one else has commented in more than a year.

The skeptical part of my brain is wondering at the strategy behind what you and I perceive as trickery. Do a number of people, after they’ve signed up for free membership, decide “What the heck, I already have a free account, I might as well pay the “Donation” fee here rather than a subscription fee elsewhere.” In which case, the posturing as free and not-for-profit has worked to get subscriptions in a very competitive field.

Or do others who sign up here believe that the “Free membership” offered is not trickery and that subscriptions being called Donations is also not trickery? And that the website owners are genuine and sincere?

Thanks again, Mad, for your comments and balanced approach.

Jana :-)

Is there any other payment method for donation without paypal ?

Some people are super ungrateful! Jeez. Personally, I would love to thank “7h3h” for putting in the time and effort to help us out. I do wish a couple of things: 1) there was a way to donate through other means (buymeacoffee?) 2) GPLDL could get the automated updater working like gpltimes.